WOYWW 130

Plenty on the go on the workdesk this fine Wednesday morning. At the back on the right are two maze books folded and glued and ready to be decorated as 2012 memory books. At the front is another along with various die cuts that I am going to use in the decoration. I recently enjoyed a workshop at the Craft Barn where we made an Advent maze book, so this is the inspiration for the ones I'm now working on. On the right is the makings of a calendar. The shape I believe is called a dodecahedron. I started it at Stamping Club, so will now get busy inking, stamping and gluing to finish it. In the middle is some Stampbord. Two pieces are inked, stamped and clear embossed ready to go on a Christmas card, and the third piece is stamped ready to be coloured with the little Versacolour pads and stamped again.

If you fancy a snoop at some more desks, pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground to collect the keys to work rooms the world over.

WOYWW 127

I'm afraid my desk is looking a bit dismal for all you WOYWW visitors. Not a lot to see at all, I'm afraid. On the top tier basket is a little exploding box that I made some years ago to contain some family photos. I searched it out to remind myself how it is made as we are doing more at our local stamping club.

However, fear not, the work space will not remain so dreary for long. That's because last night I unearthed the Christmas stuff. I've been in denial about the approach of the festive season, but if I'm to get any cards, tags, decs or crafty gifts made, I'd better get a wiggle on. It should be quite fun rediscovering the stamps and bits and bobs in these boxes.

The craft desk has been somewhat neglected these past few days as I've been busy with the autumn clearing up process in the garden, and doing creosoting and repairs to chicken sheds and runs to make sure they're sound and weatherproof for the winter.

I've been well and truly inspired in the gardening department by my latest visit to Sissinghurst. The gardens closed at the end of October, but I was lucky enough to be able to be part of a group who spent a day with the head gardener seeing the work that goes on at this time of year. A couple of gardeners were busy in the borders, cutting back, digging out, digging in compost, and in the picture below planting wallflowers and verbascum.

Another gardener was hedge cutting. The little box hedges are done, and they are now working on the yew. They work to specific measurements with spirit levels and plumb lines, and the results are stunning. The left hand side of the hedge had been done and you can see the crisp lines.

We also spent sometime with the gardener in charge of the lawns. A challenging responsibility with in excess of 185,000 visitors. You can see here that this lawn has been scarified and treated with selective herbicide. It will have new seed and fertiliser applied, so, come the new season, it should be vigorous and green.

In one of my summer visits I saw the cardiocrinum giganteum (Giant Himalayan Lily) that had flowered for the first time, and mentioned it in a WOYWW post. Here it is again in autumn with its enormous seed pods.



To visit more work desks, pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground blog. Happy Wednesday.

WOYWW 123

Another Wednesday morning. A cloudy sky, but enough sunshine and warmth to make it a pleasant day. Time to pop over to Julia's to collect the keys to a whole load of work rooms across the world.

This week sees my table remarkably clear. That's 'cos I had a tidy up after putting the finishing touches to the desk tidy which was the project at Neil Walker's most enjoyable Sunday workshop at the Craft Barn. I'm either going to have to have a bit of shuffle round to be able to accommodate it on my postage stamp desk top, or place it on the adjacent surface. Attached on the right hand side of the tidy is a little notebook with a new cover to fit in with the general look.

On the other side the flower and cat embellishments are made from clay cut with cookie cutters and coloured with Butternut Fresco paint. The cat's stripes are stamped with Venetian Orange archival ink.

The little clay cat is to remind me of my lovely Charlie who is missed so much. It's just over two weeks since it became clear that his medication was no longer dealing with his health problems. I always get so attached to these furry friends, so to lose one is very upsetting. Here he is in the garden where he loved to snooze in the sun, or stalk mice and shrews. A shy but very affectionate boy. I think his fifteen years were really happy ones.

WOYWW

The things at the front of the workdesk this morning were deposited there yesterday when I had a tidy up of the kitchen table. Periodically I set up there when I think I am going to be messier than usual. In this instance I was playing with various new goodies from the recent Ally Pally Big Stamp show, and having a go at a technique shown by Lin Brown of LB Crafts involving Viva Terra, the potentially messy bit. Love watching Lin's demos. Always so inspirational for me.

My favourite Ally Pally purchase was some Pan Pastels. Now I already have pastels in stick form in my Box of Colours, so I told myself I didn't need more, but these Pan ones seemed different, so I decided to dip my toe in the water with four colours. Trying out what Lin had shown us was lots of fun and I loved the effects achieved. The stick pastels in my box don't work for these techniques, but it did make me experiment with my neglected palettes of chalks which also produce some pleasing effects. And of course, as you can see I have added some new colours to my Pan Pastel stock.



For the chance to peek at workdesks across the world, call in at Julia's. Happy Wednesday.

WOYWW & SSSS

Who said it was allowed to be Wednesday again so quickly? However, it does mean that over at Julia's Stamping Ground you can grab the chance to have a good old unashamed snoop at other people's workspaces.

Later this week is our local stamping club meeting, so I have been working on my double page spread in a circle journal with an inchies and twinchies theme - trying not to leave it to absolutely the last moment.

One way or another, the pages have been embossed within an inch of their lives, so it certainly fits this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show where the theme is embossing.

The background of the left hand page is last week's Grungy Monday theme - clear embossing on distress ink with more DI applied on top - in this case Tumbled Glass and Walnut Stain. The swirl is embossed with a Ranger gold powder, and the Stampbord pieces are clear embossed on top of Tumbled Glass and Coffee Archival stamping with Magenta and Inkadinkado stamps.

The right hand page has brown metal inchies embossed first in the Big Shot and then with hand tools, and then sanded and coloured with Stream alcohol ink, and another set of inchies made from card, stamped and clear embossed. There's a metal embossed bird and another two birds and a cage all treated with EPs, and the background is stamped with a Tim flourish embossed in Cosmic Shimmer Lapis Black Aurora.

Grungy Monday 15

This week Linda at Studio L3 has directed us to one of Tim's Holtz' 12 Tags techniques for the Grungy Monday challenge. You can find instructions here on Tim's blog.

I decided to go along with Tim's choice of background colours - Shabby Shutters and Vintage Photo. I used these same colours on the fragment of torn card. Can't remember where I got the stamp. In the little square I again used these colours plus Walnut Stain to stamp with a Paperbag Studios stamp, and then I coloured with Tea Dye DI. The cage and bird are of course cut from Tim's dies. I used the background technique again on the card that I cut the bird from, and its eye is a clear sparkly crystal coloured with Rust AI. The cage was painted with gold dabber, then embossed with Tea Dye Distress EP and rubbed with Vintage Photo DI. The rose is made from white card coloured with Tea Dye and Walnut Stain.

This week's vase of flowers from the garden. Generally speaking when choosing roses for my garden, I went for beautifully perfumed repeating roses. However, at one point I rescued some 50p roses from the waifs and strays section in a garden centre. They may not have a perfume, but they certainly are prolific and have sweet little flowers which last extremely well in a vase.

And also in the garden some of the babies who are now six weeks old. They are feathered up, except for their backs, and could leave mum, but she doesn't seem to have got tired of them yet. At this age the feathers on their hocks and feet are a bit out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, but they will grow into them eventually !

Tag It On 86: The Age of Chivalry

I loved the theme of the Dragon's Dream Tag It On challenge this week: The Age of Chivalry. It set me thinking of illuminated manuscripts, French medieval literature and courtly love. I have to confess though that only one stamp sprang to mind for use on this theme and that was the background manuscript one from Elusive Images; so I had to trawl through my boxes and draw up a short list. The ones that made it on to the card were the Crafty Individuals border one, the Elusive Images unicorn and the Cherry Pie Belle Ferronniere.

I die cut the tag from manila cardstock and clear embossed the manuscript stamp. Then I applied Antique Linen, Tea Dye and Walnut Stain DIs with a blending tool. The rest of the stamping is in Coffee Archival, and the colouring in DIs and Inktense pencils.

I really wanted to use the little Elusive Images silhouette castle, but it didn't fit in, so I ended up putting it behind a facet. My plan is eventually to put all my tags in an album instead of just having them pile up on a shelf. So the facet can go in the album along with the little rose I made from card coloured with Tea Dye and Walnut Stain.